Ray Charles

This month marks the 50th anniversary of Ray Charles' INGREDIENTS IN A RECIPE FOR SOUL. That album's biggest hit was “Busted,” and a few years later, Brother Ray appeared on Johnny Cash's TV show to sing it with the host.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, former Warner Bros. Records executive and industry insider Stan Cornyn ruminates on the past, present, and future of the music business.

Atlantic Records had few to no stars signed to its artist roster back in 1953. Good music makers, yeah, but none that the big record marketplace yearned for. Atlantic was just another one of those “indies,” with occasional sellers like Ruth Brown’s “Teardrops from My Eyes,” and Joe Turner’s “Chains of Love.”

Every Tuesday and Thursday, former Warner Bros. Records executive and industry insider Stan Cornyn ruminates on the past, present, and future of the music business.

Herb Abramson’s unexpected return to New York from Germany’s Army Dental Office set all parties off balance. It was April of ’55, and Herb’s marriage to Miriam had sunk off the map, in full flounder. Arriving back in New York with a pregnant German girlfriend had made that utterly clear. Miriam and Herb would be divorcing. Since his return to Atlantic, Miriam spoke to Herb less than zero, in the office or out.

Neither was the rest of Atlantic prepared for the return of “President Herb.” Jerry Wexler sat pat in the second management chair. Jerry was now a share-holder, a music maven, and active producer.

And the company’s business attitude had shifted from two years ago, when it was all R&B everything. Now, expansion had filled the label’s chairs to overflow.

Ahmet’s older brother, Nesuhi Ertegun, had joined the company just three months earlier, there to handle jazz and album production. So those areas were filled, too.

So: What to do with Herb? As Miriam made clear-as-a-Miriam to Ahmet, “He’s your problem.”

Atlantic now hummed along on three cylinders (Jerry, Ahmet, and Nesuhi).

Every Tuesday and Thursday, former Warner Bros. Records executive and industry insider Stan Cornyn ruminates on the past, present, and future of the music business.

Since its beginning moments, Atlantic’s heads had loved the sound of black artists. They signed them, and created their new Atlantic records label to make records just like the records they’d heard on black radio, bought in black record stores, loved more than chicks, and played to death.

Or to put it less reverently, “rhythm and blues” was Atlantic’s total cliché.

Ahmet had even grown adept at creating new songs in that mode. That proved useful to this new label being run by two white guys. (Being a small label, Atlantic hardly got first choice of new songs from the big publishers. Little Atlantic came in maybe next-to-last with publishers when it came to fresh tunes to record, and left-over songs rarely sold.)

So Ahmet (using the spelled-backwards writer name of “Nugetre”) started writing his own R&B tunes for Atlantic’s Clyde McPhatter, Joe Turner, Ben E. King, Ray Charles. And his feel for R&B records made him, as they would say, “hip to the tip.”

Atlantic had moved to floors four and five of a building above Patsy’s Restaurant (234 W. 56th, Mid-town).

Up on Floor Five, Atlantic’s two heads, Ahmet and Herb, held the faith. Hits like hits they’d heard before. Black ones.

It's Jazz Appreciation Month here, and as we look at the genre's top
performers and recordings, it's hard to ignore the role the piano has
played in the development of the music. It is truly one of the keys to
jazz...

Born of African music blended with a bit of European harmony and a
Carribean tinge, jazz first took root in the American South,
particularly St. Louis and New Orleans. Ragtime was a prominent jazz
precursor, its syncopated rhythms and their flights of melodic fancy
popular in the cities' red-light districts around the beginning of the
20th century. “King of Ragtime” Scott Joplin helped popularize the
sound well beyond its regional roots through sheet music and player
piano rolls.

Ray Charles proved that anything was possible when he carved out his very own place in music, as the first purveyor of Soul.
Check out Ray Charles' Unvaulted profile complete with a discography, biography, and gallery in the Spotify Warner Sound app.